Lantern Light
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: Naruto. Time Travel. Bad things. Sequal to 'Chinese Lanterns'.


"It's alright," he says. "I know another way home."

* * *

Standing in the middle of the marketplace, covered in dirt and smelling like piss. His hair matted with blood, tangled in knots, and obscuring his vision.

The mirror, it's face shattered, still no reflection, laying far behind. Back where he could never again go. Buried in the sand and sinking further every day.

You have come a long way, to this. To be here. In this village so foreign and familar to you, where your duplicate runs free. Where he is tall and happy, and people smile and wave at him as he passes by. His cheeks still thick with baby fat, his hair scruffy and blonde.

But where there should be scars running from nose to ear, .. they are gone.

Standing in the middle of the market, being jostled from side to side, it took Naruto an entire hour to realize that here, in this haven of a world without death and despair, where a blonde man could walk the streets, what was really missing.

_You fool, Naruto._ The thought came. _You brought it with you._

Touching his stomach with a trembling hand, feeling sick all over and no where to go.

* * *

_"You are thin, Naruto. You should eat." _

* * *

He is pressed against the backside of a thick elm that grows outside the Academy. His old home.

His face presses into the bark, cutting his cheek. He longs.

But the men here, they do not know him. There is another Naruto in his place. A better one, who belongs. Naruto, who is lost, stares at the figures who were once his friends in an old life. Hiding behind the leaves.

They laugh, and press close. But they do not see him.

_You are a shinobi, Naruto. You should know better._ And, indeed, he should. He knows what ninja do. To liars, charltans and traitors. To ones who would pretend to be someone who they so obviously could not.

You have no friends here, Naruto. You have no home.

With no way back..

* * *

Sitting outside the bar, in what passes for a gutter, pressed between the end of the alley and two overflowing bins of garbage.

Come. Come here, to the end of the world. To World's End.

The smoke from inside wafts out, a fog a mist. Voice scream and shout, and a glass slams against the wall, the shattering lost from within the chaos of words.

Naruto, his head nestled in his hands, lost. His face wrapped tightly in dingy cloth - lest anyone see his face, recognize who he should not be. Though he's too short, too small. Too weak and tired.

Staring into space. Trying to see through the bricks of the other side of the alleyway, where the moon falls through and lights.

When Kakashi, his old teacher, steps through the doorway. The door swinging shut as he stops, his hands fiddling. The noise cut off again, for a moment. Drawing a book from his pocket, his fingers circular. Glances, to his side, at Naruto.

Looks away.

Breathes the night air as he straightens up, holds the book tight. You can't tell what he's thinking, if he's thinking at all. The wind rattles through the alleyway, but Kakashi.

Kakashi walks away.

Naruto lowers his head further into his hands, his eyes wide and open, but unable to see. He is dejected, has no place to sleep no friends to call his own. The night is cold and it makes his nose water. He has become filthy from sleeping outdoors and does not tend to it.

Kakashi knows not who this Naruto is, and does not offer any help to him. Can't help. It kills Naruto to know his former teacher is this close and he can say nothing, he says nothing.

* * *

_(This mirror is blue, clear and beautiful... But there's no reflection.)_  
- Parallel Tower, hack of Legend of Zelda

* * *

The procession is carried over a river, and the lanterns echo darkness in the most eerie of ways.

Naruto sneaks back, again, into the village, looking for who he left behind. Through the trail he has memorized by day and dusk, he stalks his heart until suddenly the way opens into fire.

And though he stares into the flames of chinese lanterns, he can not see the light.

* * *

Naruto soon fell so far into the pits of damnation and no-return, that his only saving grace was a total absence from humanity.

And so he took up himself, and wrapped his darkness around him like a cloak, neither seeing nor hearing, but living as a dead thing. Until all lines separating himself from the demon within began to fade, and he could barely tell where Kyuubi ended and he began.

Thus, when the last of the world had turned its eye from him, Naruto sought the ends of the earth.

He brought neither food nor comfort, having no need of either, and left in the total security of broad daylight.

Jiraiya, busy in his own dilemmas, notices the loss but does not follow. He looks for Naruto in the bottom of his glass. But never finds him.

* * *

In a land that was only ever a myth (as the Bijuu themselves were only ever myths), where all things come to an end, Naruto found the lost city hidden in sand like a coffin buried beneath slimy gravestones.

And he took up a piece of history, a lasting treasure that did not exist, upon himself, holding the gilded shine of tarnished mirror. And in this he saw his own soul and was displeased and despaired.

But, though he did not believe, his wish was made and, in concord, granted.

_Let it never be._

The Kyuubi, disaster within him, was pulled taunt by these epic forces as they demanded of him.

But the Yondaime's seal was too great, and the fire of the fox became bound to Naruto's humanity, until they were one and the same.

So defeated thus, the forces left him be, and the world changed without him.

* * *

_(And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?)_

* * *

_Note:_ Second half, technically, of _Chinese Lanterns_.  
Real rough draft. I shouldn't even be posting this, actually.

Er. If I need to take this down and put it back on the drawing board, just say so. I know _Chinese Lanterns_ is extremely vague and this is confusing in that the first half is in the present and the second half is in the past..


End file.
